I mean it’s an inherently anti-consumer policy, the question is if that hit to consumer choice is worth it for the manufacturers that are getting a leg up, or to kneecap a foreign adversary who’s making a play at market capture.
Trump doesn’t have anything close to the market awareness to make these judgement calls with any degree of accuracy outside of tariffing literally everything that’s imported and hoping it hits some of the right spots.
I mean, tariffs can definitely make sense if a country is making extremely cheap alternatives that destroy the local industry or if another country sells insanely cheap options to get a monopoly on the market to then increase the price.
Problem is that that country is miles ahead in the technology of the other country’s local industry and has fine do through economies of scale while the other country keeps on pumping out high margin versions of their inferior product
There is an economic argument that goods are selling at the clearing rate. We sell widgets for $5 because that’s the price point at which we move the most number of widgets and therefore generate the most revenue.
If we start taxing imported widgets by $1/ea, the retailer has to choose between stocking the domestic widget (expensive but no tax) versus the imported widget (cheap but taxed). But they still want to maximize the units sold, so they won’t raise the price above $5.
There is a counterargument that tariffs will cause importers to redirect their supply to other countries. That drives the gross inventory down over time and raises the clearing price above $5.
But, broadly speaking, tariffs will raise the price of goods that we can’t efficiently make in the US while the price of goods we can make will remain largely unchanged. So this then raises the question, What Do We Make in the United States Today?
Dumb decisions, people nervous, that sort of thing…
The question is: what should we be making in the US?
Tariffs can give domestic manufacturing a temporary reprieve from lower priced foreign suppliers, to build or improve domestic manufacturing.
They can also be used to try to punish other countries for unfair trading practices
For example
- 100% tariffs on Chinese manufactured EVs are claimed to be in retaliation on for unfair Chinese government subsidies
- US government is offering incentives to domestic EV manufacturers and purchasers of domestically produced EVs, which could help build domestic production, in conjunction with temporary tariffs
I’m not convinced that they’ve put this much thought into it, nor that domestic manufacturers will use this window of opportunity
100% tariffs on Chinese manufactured EVs are claimed to be in retaliation on for unfair Chinese government subsidies
The Chinese government subsidies are the same set of public improvements and business incentives every industrial country provides to build up domestic infrastructure. They’re significantly less generous than the Big Three Bailouts that Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden all had to extend at least once in each of their terms.
US government is offering incentives to domestic EV manufacturers
But this is also an “unfair” subsidy, isn’t it?
I’m not convinced that they’ve put this much thought into it, nor that domestic manufacturers will use this window of opportunity
Foreign car companies - BYD being one, but Hyundai, Toyota, and Volkswagen certainly piling on the bandwagon - have invested far more money in small vehicle production than US contemporaries. Consequently, they tend to produce vehicles with better fuel economy at a much cheaper price point.
At the end of the day, that’s what this tariff is penalizing.
Retailers in the US should add a second price tag with the 20pct included as an example
That should be the exact attack ad Harris uses.
Retailers have already put plenty of new price tags with 20 percent added under Biden.
You enjoying the tax hikes your fuhrer enacted after ballooning the deficit and creating this runaway inflation we are experiencing?
The person you responded to sure makes a lot of AI posts…
your fuhrer enacted
“Hey, inflation happened under Biden.”
“You’re a fucking Nazi”
:-/ That Lemmy Discourse, folks.
Is that what I said? No. I call trump their fuhrer because they want him to be their fascist dictator.
they want him to be their fascist dictator
That’s what noticing inflation under a rival administration means, yes sir.
No, you absolute potato. That’s what happens when you try to overthrow a democracy with a violent coup attempt after losing an election.
How does noticing inflation under Biden do this?
Like what happened to everywhere in the world post pandemic? Corporate profiteering? Sure… blame Biden…
Is there really any way to get us making things again?
Part of me feels like that would be better for workers, but I’m kind of a dumbass
Do you want things to be cheaper or wages to be higher (especially wages for those in low wage jobs).
There were ideals about competitive advantage. But the whole economy has been undercut by lower wages elsewhere that things got cheaper but not because of increases in productivity in the economy so wages went down.
There are a lot of pressure to deflate wages with free trade and immigration. But things that increase wages like market forces and limited labour aren’t really a factor anymore.
Making things again would be taxes on imports, free education, tax breaks for RandD and investment. Also subsidies and blocks on exporting IP and knowledge.
So trumps tariff plan could get us making things in America again or no? It seems like workers had a lot more power and therefore higher wages before america de-industrialized and that was a better thing for the average person but I don’t know I wasn’t around then
I’m not American so I don’t really know what’s going on. It seems that people, especially on this website, can’t see anything Trump says or does as a positive because he isn’t on their team. But he certainly has said and done things that are right or a positive at least for some people. Can’t just disagree with someone for the sole reason you don’t like him.
But economics is complicated. For example trade barriers make things more expensive and could increase jobs or decrease them. Or more accurately increase in some areas and decrease in others. No one knows what’s going to happen for sure, even looking back people disagree on what has happened.
But I personally think there has been too much emphasis on GDP growth around the western world and lower business costs rather than increasing discretionary income and jobs for lowest earners. So policies that are weighted for that rather than businesses I see as net gain at the moment.
Trump is an evil bigot but yeah even a broken clock is right twice a day. I can’t stand people who dismiss or demonize an argument for the sole reason that it has been voiced by trump.
To be fair, it’s corporations choosing to raise the price instead of making less money. You see this exact argument from the other side when the left wants to make the wealthy pay taxes. Either way it’s a deeply flawed argument.
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You mean like the tariffs to EVs that Biden announced?
Yea, those are bad, too. Are you under the impression that we just don’t have enough of them and that’s the issue?
No, I mean that it’s hypocritical criticising the other administration for following the same trend
A great deal of the Biden economic policy is focused on decoupling from China and moving outsourced corporate slave labor practices to US allies in India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
But the rub is that these countries are just importing cheap manufactured surplus from China, rebranding it, and shipping it to the US after collecting a transfer fee.
So a lot of this isn’t hypocrisy as much as it is the nationalist geopolitics of DC running into the greed and deceptive practices of international business interests.
The “slave labor” thing about china is 40 years too late. China now has wildly better working conditions than India or Phillipines or Indonesia or Malaysia.
Aren’t you concerned with the cold-war-like escalation that we’re seeing the US adopt against china?
Right, but it’s Lemmy. Talking about the universal housing, elimination of poverty, age 60 retirement policy, no chronic student debts or medical debts, blah blah blah makes you a far left anti-Taiwan tankie.
Aren’t you concerned with the cold-war-like escalation
Terrified. But more for American East Asians, at the end of the day. They’re already getting the Arab-American treatment by degrees. If we continue to escalate, it won’t be long before they’re full 2nd class citizens.
How dare you point out the hypocrisy?! Seriously though, people downvoting you need to understand that while democrats are better than trump on most issues, they’re largely the same on this particular issue, so it’s not exactly a point that can be pinned solely on trump.
Those taxes didn’t really impact many things that American consumers can already buy.
They mostly hit Chinese manufacturers that were on the edge of releasing sub-40k EV in the US. Example: Geely’s Volvo ex30. That thing is a very compelling alternative to what Tesla offers.
A cheaper ev hitting us market would impact what americans can buy,
My point is that Biden’s 100% tariffs on Chinese manufacturers EVs do not increase the cost of living in the US. It basically keeps it the same, since Americans really aren’t buying BYD or Geely cars coming from Chinese manufacturing lines.
Trump’s proposed tariffs would increase the cost of goods people in the US are already purchasing, not just the goods people might purchase.
Too bad Biden kept the tariffs Trump instituted during his term and increased them. Trump will add even more tariffs during his term, but I’m not confident that the democrat that follows won’t also keep and add onto them.
It will make things more expensive for consumers. But workers will have better wages, due to there being more jobs.
The economy is a set of feedback loops. Kind of like the brain. Trump’s tariffs will make things more expensive in the same way quitting cocaine will make everything harder to do.
Ah look, an ignorant traitor supporter spewing the same bullshit their rapist fuhrer tells them to parrot.
No wonder you people fall for that demented felon with zero real plan. You’re too dumb to realize you’re being played.
Fuck your wannabe dictator, you anti-freedom, anti-american trash.
The only people making more money will be the people that are already rich. Nice try though.
The tariffs only increase US worker wages if they are significant enough to promote domestic manufacturing. If we still can’t produce the widget at home for the same or less expensively, then all we’ve done is create a federal sales tax on Chinese goods.
